In Manychat, you can assign Live Chat conversations to agents or groups either manually or automatically. Auto-assignment is a powerful Inbox feature that streamlines conversation management by distributing new inquiries among available team members. Enabling auto-assignment ensures that conversations are handled efficiently, creating a more structured and effective workflow.
You can configure Auto-Assignment in Settings → Inbox → Auto-Assignment.
There are three states of auto-assignment:
- Off: When auto-assignment is disabled, all new conversations go to the Unassigned folder, and agents must manually assign them.
- Basic: When enabled for all team members, conversations are evenly distributed among all available agents.
- Advanced: Allows conversations to be assigned to specific groups or team members using Assignment Rules.
💡 Only team members with Live Chat seats appear in the auto-assignment settings and can receive auto-assigned conversations. If a team member is missing from the list, it means they don’t have a Live Chat seat in this Manychat account.
To enable it, go to Settings → Team Members, choose a team member by clicking Edit, then toggle on Live Chat seat under Seat Type:
To learn more about managing Live Chat seats, check out this article.
Basic auto-assignment
You can manage which agents participate in auto-assignment and adjust their conversation limits. Limits help control the number of conversations an agent can handle at once, ensuring that workloads are balanced and agents aren’t overwhelmed, especially those with many active conversations.
⚠️ Conversations can't be auto-assigned to agents without defined limits.
You also have the option to disable limits for agents, allowing them to receive an unlimited number of new conversations.
Once everything is set up, click the Enable Auto-Assignment button in the upper-right corner to begin automatically distributing conversations among agents.
Advanced auto-assignment
This type of auto-assignment uses Assignment Rules to distribute conversations. Rules can be applied to both individual agents and groups. Based on specific conditions, they automatically route conversations to the appropriate agent or group. To learn how to set up groups, check this article.
To enable rule-based auto-assignment, you must create at least one Inbox Rule. Click + Rule to create and configure a new Assignment Rule:
You can define the necessary conditions in your rule by clicking + Condition and specify whether conversations should be assigned to a group or an individual agent:
Make sure to save and activate the rule once all the settings are configured.
To duplicate, rename, or delete a rule, open it, click the three dots, and select the desired option:
You can create multiple Rules to customize the auto-assignment system according to your team's workflow and account needs. This allows you to efficiently distribute conversations based on specific conditions, ensuring that the right agents or groups handle each inquiry.
⚠️ Ensure that agent limits are set before activating rules. Otherwise, the rule will not be activated.
Once everything is set up, click the Enable Auto-Assignment button in the upper-right corner to begin automatically distributing conversations based on the rules.
⚠️ When all agents reach their limits, new conversations will remain unassigned and will not be automatically assigned, even if previously assigned conversations are closed.